Abstracts of previous talks

Coming from kernel space

In the previous cookie talk "Gaining access to other processes memory", we saw how easy it this can be. Nevertheless, there are mechanisms to block simple accesses. At the sIT talk "ProxyDLL and Clientless - Emulating the engine of online applications" we faced some of these mechanisms and found a way into the address space of the process by letting it load our own library. However, new mechanisms prevent accesses from user space. Therefore, this talk shows methods to gain access to any address in user space by writing an own kernel mode driver for Windows. This is useful, as it is the same way how anti-virus scanners scan memory. Hereby, it will circumvent all restrictions and is undetectable by other programs.

Graph Theory and Game of Thrones

You might have already read many articles about various statistics in Game of Thrones and speculations of who is going to die next in the story. Here is another one, based on graph theory. In the following research I’m not using the TV show rather it will be based on the main source - the first 5 books of epic fantasy novels of George R. R. Martin, “A Song of Ice and Fire” (ASOIAF). But well, don’t be disappointed if you only watch TV shows, they intersect a lot and hopefully the show will continue to take advises from the author.
I have used the most popular algorithms in the Graph Theory to find out some interesting statistics and predict most popular or vulnerable characters in the whole story.

Virtual Reality - The Vision Becomes Reality

When Facebook announced the acquisition of Virtual Reality Startup Oculus for 2 billion dollars in March 2014, many observers were confused about this bold move. In his statement Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg drew up a vision of the enormous potential of this technology and predicted that VR will develop into a platform, a medium for many more experiences. Text, pictures and videos already enable us to experience situations and events, but this effect reaches a whole new level with VR. Using VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, we feel like we are right in the middle of events, as if we were a witness or even participating.

In early 2014 the vision still sounded pretty incredible, but is slowly turning into reality ever since. After four years of development, the Oculus Rift finally enters the mass market in 2016, as well as its main competitors HTC Vive and Playstation VR. Today, VR is one of the hottest topics in technology with the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon hopping on the bandwagon. The presentation will give an overview over the development of the hype, the state of the technology, the potential of the market and fascinating applications.

Reverse Engineering the Software of Life

Just like computers, organisms have to be programmed. Although being developed for about five billion years, the operating system of life and all required software is completely free of charge and we are allowed to share it with others as often as we want. But there is a catch: the code is messy, the developers didn’t bother to document - there is not a single line of comment in the code… Welcome to biology, the biggest reverse engineering challenge of the 21st century!

Biologists now generate an incredible volume of high dimensional data. A meaningful analysis is not possible without advanced skills in computer science and statistics. In my talk I give a quick introduction into the field of genomics and cherry-pick interesting biological and medical questions that can be answered by sequencing experiments. Biology is now rapidly transforming into a quantitative science. My goal is to give a glimpse into the current state and the future of medicine and biology.

Sensors, Networks and RC Cars

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) allow gathering various data about
environments in which they are deployed, but there is little point to
the data if the location at which it was measured is unknown. Different
approaches to localization in WSNs allow estimating the positions, but
they vary in cost, efficiency and effectiveness. This short talk gives
some information on an approach called sensor assisted monte carlo
localization (SA-MCL) and how we used RC cars for science.

Digital Humanities for Computer Scientists … or: How I became infected with the Indiana Jones virus

Many definitions have been formulated to describe the Digital Humanities, driven either by political interests or born out of one's own approach to it. This cookie talk describes my understanding of the Digital Humanities as an IT person and aims to show what computer scientists can contribute to our cultural heritage. The talk summarises several applications and developments that have been designed by my teams and me since 2008.

I did an Internship at Google ... and All I Got Was this Stupid T-Shirt

Mining for Bugs with Graph Database Queries

While graph databases are primarily known as the backbone of the modern
dating world, this nerd has found a much more interesting application
for them: program analysis. This talk aims to demonstrate that graph
databases and the typical program representations developed in compiler
construction are a match made in heaven, allowing large code bases to be
mined for vulnerabilities using complex bug descriptions encoded in
simple, and not so simple graph database
queries.

Competitive programming and algorithms

Why is it so popular? Do we really need efficient algorithms
in software industry?

A small insight into Anti-Virus scanners

Many people make use of anti-virus scanners to detect malicious software. But how do they actually work and what are they actually detecting? The detection methods and databases are commonly not publicly accessible. What if we could gain an insight into these by analyzing the programs inspected by an AV scanner?

Gaining access to other processes memory

Is it easy to influence other processes or read out their memory? What methods exist to gain access to arbitrary memory parts of processes? We will see how easy it is to modify own programs and will also have a look at other processes.

Intuition vs. Truth: Evaluation of Common Myths about StackOverflow Posts

Posting and answering questions on StackOverflow (SO) is everyday
business for many developers. We asked a group of developers what they
expect to be true about questions and answers on SO. Most of their
expectations were related to the likelyhood of getting an answer or to
voting behavior. From their comments, we formulated nine myths that they
think are true about the platform. Then, we proceeded to use rather
simple methods from statistics to check if these myths are supported by
the data in the SO dump provided. Through our analysis, we determined
that there is an effect for eight of the nine myths the developers
believed in. However, for only four of the myths the effect size is
large enough to actually make a difference. Hence, we could bust five
myths the developers believed in.

Just Do it! Entrepreneurship and Computer Science. How to start and grow.

If you came to study Computer Science. You probably think about working for a giant tech company. But have you thought that these companies were once started by people just like you now. From his experience, Omar will tell you all about it. How to start a tech company and what are the essentials to grow your company and succeed.

Software Operability - Dreams of a Sysadmin

A short introduction to the problems of operating Software in a production Environment and some suggestions, what Developers could do, to make the life of a Sysadmin easier by looking on real world examples.

Taxi

"Let's be honest here, what does a programmer fundamentally do? A programmer moves data from one memory location to another. Over and over.
In this respect, a programmer is not unlike a taxi driver. A taxi driver moves people from place to place all day long.
The people get dropped off, do their things, and new people get loaded back up to be taken someplace else -
except unlike programmers, the things taxi drivers shuffle around all day pay them for the service!
Well programmers no longer need to put up with that kind of ingratitude from their data: introducting the Taxi Programming Language!" -Sean Heber